Playlist for the Apocalypse

Chapter 23: Lonesome Loser

JONATHAN

            It was still dark when they made their way out of the Skytrain station and headed back out onto the road. As they walked, they took care to give the city's inhabitants a wide berth. A dazed old man in a weather damaged paperboy cap stood at a street corner mechanically offering faded, yellowing pamphlets to an invisible audience. A few morning commuters, some still in their pajamas, stood in line at a coffee stand. They seemed unaware of the shattered windows along the street and, more concerningly, the fact that several of them were standing on the broken glass with bloodied feet as they shifted from foot to foot in the queue. A blank-faced barista stood poised at the counter pouring imaginary liquid from an empty pot.

They stopped by a defunct grocery store to replenish their backpacks. As Jonathan perused the mainly bare shelves and aisles hunting for supplies, he tried to ignore the teenage girl who stood at the cash register. A foul odor hung in the air around her and there were thick dark circles under her eyes, if he didn't know better, she could've passed for an exhausted college student. She stared vacantly into the void slowly grabbing at anything within arm's reach to scan into the no longer functioning register. His chest felt tight at the depressing sight of it all and he fiddled with the volume of his Walkman until it was loud enough to drown out his thoughts.

            He snuck a glance over at Evelyn. His travel companion had been busying herself at the corner of the store carving her initials into a lottery ticket. Even with her mask and goggles covering her face, he could tell she, too, was trying to avoid looking at the soulless. A woman in a ragged blue frock stared without seeing at a shelf, while a hollow-looking little boy in a dinosaur t-shirt pulled at the hem of her dress robotically.

He thought of going over to Evelyn and offering her one of his ear buds, but as she caught his gaze, she turned away. Hurriedly, she stuffed the lottery ticket in the windowsill and left the store, leaving him to finish scavenging.

They had both been less than chatty that morning. Jonathan wondered if perhaps she had a hangover after the events of last night. They'd both gotten pretty tipsy, but it had been her first time drinking after all and he wasn't sure how much of a lightweight that would make her... In fact, he wasn't sure how much of it she even remembered. They'd had enough sense the night before to set up camp and had woken up in their respective sleeping bags, but she hadn't spoken of the kiss or rather kisses they'd shared the night before and if Jonathan was being honest with himself, it was all driving him a bit crazy. He disliked being in his own head so much. It wasn't like him to fixate self-consciously on every single little detail, and he couldn't stand the way his mind kept taking him back to the way it had felt to run his fingers through her hair and cup her face in his hands... especially when she was avoiding eye contact and hiding her face behind one of Guy's stupid camo masks. Perhaps she didn't remember or worse, perhaps she was embarrassed and regretted it.

Jonathan felt the knot growing in his stomach, twist even tighter at that thought and decided perhaps it was better for them both to just pretend it didn't happen.

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts that it took him a moment to realize that the entire soulless population of the grocery store had turned to look at him. The cashier at the counter had stopped scanning and even the little boy in the dinosaur t-shirt was staring at him through foggy green eyes. Slowly Jonathan reached up to tuck his mouth beneath the collar of his t-shirt and grabbed a pair of aviators off the rotating rack of sunglasses nearby and slid them over his eyes. Concluding there was nothing useful left in the grocery store, he headed out the door after Evelyn. Luckily, the soulless only regarded him blankly as he left before returning to their ghostly existences.

They managed to locate and hot wire a Harley Davidson that had been left abandoned between a collapsed convenience store and hotel. As they practiced balancing and getting accustomed to their new ride, a Soulless jogger stopped to ogle them until Jonathan carefully lured it towards the revolving door of the hotel lobby and convinced it to complete its aimless circuit there instead.